Rats and Gargoyles (39 page)

Now his thoughts slipped back into the taught mode,
Lucas easily picked out snipers behind the tents, musketeers in the cover at the
edge of the building site, armed men and women massing behind the first unarmed
rows of the great crowd.

"I require nothing but to station this here as
protection," Plessiez said.

"What will you do now–sit quiet and watch Falke’s
builders?" She chuckled. "Do that, then. I have a proclamation of my own to
make, now that it’s midday."

At Lucas’s elbow, the Lord-Architect Casaubon dug
in his pocket and fumbled out a watch, flicked open the casing, and rumbled:
"Not yet. A few minutes."

"White Crow said—" Lucas cut himself off. Imaging the woman, dark red hair tumbling, at the doors of
the Fane: under the skreeing circles of daemons in flight. Noon. The Lord of
Noon and Midnight. And which is it?

"Clovis, where’s Cornelius Vanringham? Bring him. I
want him to hear this." The armored woman, moving surprisingly lightly, strode
to the front of the siege- engine. Lucas gazed down at her heat-scarlet face,
dripping with sweat. She stared past him. "Well, priest, you may as well hear
it, too. You’d hear it before the end of today, be certain of that."

Conciliatory, the black Rat bowed. "As you wish,
Lady. I shall be most interested to hear what you have to proclaim."

"Only our independence." Sardonic, her voice went
harsh and honest. "Only our freedom."

Lucas shivered: a deep motion of the flesh that
never reached his skin, that seemed to reverberate in his chest and gut. He
looked to Casaubon.

"Go now," the big man said quietly. His
plumpfingered hand closed over Plessiez’s shoulder, as the black Rat opened his
mouth to call, tightening warningly.

Not pausing to consider trust, Lucas ducked back
and slid on his buttocks past the Lord-Architect, hidden by the man’s bulk. He
stood, walked to the rear of the siege-engine; sat and slid and let himself fall
from the edge of the platform in one movement. He staggered into the crowd with
stinging ankles, thrusting between people with his elbows, tense for a shout,
the crack of a musket behind him.

Bells chimed from the five corners of the square.

Noon.

Chill fell across him, cooling his chest, arms and
back, welcome as cold water in the press of sweaty bodies. He felt muscles relax
that had been tensed against the hammering heat of midday. Shadow swept across
the square. And again, deep in his gut, his flesh shuddered.

A great intake of breath sounded around him, a
simultaneous sound from the thousands gathered. Like wind across a cornfield,
faces tipped up to the sky, ignoring the building site and the foundation-stone.
Lucas raised his head, the comers of his vision filling with yellow dazzles.

Brilliant blackness stabbed his vision. Ringed with
a corona of black flames, a black sun hung at the apex of the sky.

All the sky from arch to horizon glows yellow as
ancient parchment. The twelfth chime of noon dies. Transmuted, transformed, in a
fire of darkness: the Night Sun shines.

"How the hell did you
do
that?" the White Crow demanded over her shoulder, padding down the steep flight
of steps. "You can’t have done that; it isn’t possible!"

The blond man touched one hand to the pale stone
wall for support, leaning forward, frowning.

"It’s . . . light . . . in here. I don’t recognize
any of this."

He recollected himself and offered his hand to the
old woman. Heurodis put one foot down, lowered her other foot to join it, then
lowered herself cautiously down the next steep step. Her smoky eyes met the
White Crow’s.

"We don’t do it often. We–that’s the university,
girlie–we can do it whenever we want to. That’s something you indigent
scholar-bullies will never master."

"But you
can’t
—"

The White Crow half-missed her footing. She turned
her head, seeing white stone steps descending to an archway and a stone-flagged
door just visible beyond. Above, the high ceiling of the passage glowed pale and
deserted.

"It
is
light," she said. "And it wasn’t for
the first few minutes after we got in. I think I know what’s happening outside .
. . Reverend Mistress, you don’t understand! It isn’t a lock that keeps that
threshold closed. It isn’t
magia,
either; it’s the power of god, the
power that structures the universe. The interior of the Fane of Noon and Midnight doesn’t
exist
outside those times;
you can’t just pick the lock and get in!"

"
We
can." Heurodis grinned, showing all her
long teeth.

Reverend Master Candia took Heurodis’s hand and
rested it on the White Crow’s left shoulder. The age- spotted hand gripped with
some strength. Candia loped down to the bottom of the flight of steps. His
slashed jerkin shed fragments of lace, leaving a smell of stale alcohol on the
air.

"And I thought seeing the impossible done couldn’t
surprise me any more!" The White Crow laughed aloud. Echoes hissed up the
passage. "I’ve always wondered why the university doesn’t depend on Rat-Lords or
human patrons. If you can do that, you don’t have to.
How do you do it?"

Heurodis stepped down off the last step and took
her hand from the White Crow’s shoulder.

"We’re gods’ thieves," she said. "
And
we’ve
stolen from the gods themselves, missy. Under divine sufferance, no doubt, but
we have done."

"Crime’s a high Art." Candia gripped the lintel of
the arch, leaning to peer into the chamber beyond. One hand went to his belt,
clenched into a fist. "Heurodis is a great practitioner."

"Here."

Drawing her small knife from the back of her belt,
the White Crow passed it to the blond man. His hand, which had seemed to search
quite independently of his will, closed about the hilt; he stooped slightly as
he looked down at her, nodding with a wide-eyed surprise.

"You trust me, Master-Captain?"

"I don’t think this is a place for anyone to go
unarmed."

She hefted the rapier in her right hand, with her
left reaching up to push a coil of red hair back under her hat. A wetness
brushed her cheek. She rubbed her stinging fingers across her skin and looked
down at a bloody hand.

"Lady, you’re hurt." He took her hand by the wrist,
turning her palm upwards. A bead of blood oozed from the life-line.

"No. Or not just now anyway." The White Crow
winced, raising her left hand to her mouth, sucking at the pin-pricks made by
black roses in the Garden of the Eleventh Hour. "The stigmata of
magia.
Messire Candia, do you recognize any of this?"

"None of it, lady."

Stone dust gritted under her sandals. The White
Crow reached down and flipped them off, feeling the tension of stone under her
bare feet. She padded forward into pale light.

Squat pillars spread out, forest-like, into the
distance. From them great low vaults curved up, in arcs so shallow it seemed
impossible the masonry of the ceiling should stay supported. The sourceless
white light arced the ribs of the vaults with multiple shadows.

Her nostrils flared, catching a scent of roses.

"Why did you and . . . ?"

The blond man complied. "Theo. Bishop Theodoret, of
the Church of the Trees."

"A Reverend tutor. And a Tree-priest. Of course."

The White Crow knelt and strained her vision. A breath of warm air feathered her
cheek. Distance blurred pillars, low vaults, more pillars. No windows: the light
not the light of sun or moon.

"Why did you need Scholar-Soldiers?"

Heurodis, catching the question, snapped: "Why
indeed? What young Candia here thought he was doing asking help of the Invisible
College, I’m sure I’ll never know. Ignorant children, all of them. You, too,
missy."

Heurodis wiped a bony finger along the surface of the nearest pillar,
sniffed at the dust, and wiped it down her blue cotton dress. In tones of
waspish outrage she added: "How the University of Crime could begin to trust an organization that doesn’t even work for
gain
—"

Reduced to complete speechlessness, the White Crow
leaned her rapier against her leg, reached to pin her tumbling hair up out of
the way under her wide-brimmed hat, and at last managed to say: "You’ll have to
take that point up with one of the others. Come to think of it, I’d like you to
talk to the Lord-Architect Casaubon. Rather, I’d like him to have the experience
of talking to you . . ."

She walked forward as she talked, letting the words
come almost absently, centering herself to the familiar heft of the sword in her
hand, the weight of the backpack. Light slid about her like milk. The air grew
warmer, out under the low-vaulted ceiling; and a glimmer of blue clung to the
edges of ribs and pillars.

"If I had to guess, I’d say that noon brought us
the Night Sun." A quirk of humor showed as she glanced back at Heurodis. "After
today, I’m cautious about expressing an opinion."

"Listen."

She glanced up, seeing lines deepen in Candia’s
face; the blond man’s air of permanent injured surprise giving way to an
unselfconcerned anxiety. He stumbled as he walked past her, away from the wall.

"What—? No, I hear it. Wait. . ." The White Crow
moved forward and caught the buff-and-scarlet sleeve of his jerkin, halting him.

A deep wash of sound re-echoed from the pillars,
hissing through the milky-blue air, losing direction against the white pillars
and white vaults and white light. It died. The White Crow strained to hear. She
walked forward, head cocked sideways, tracking it for some faint hint of
direction.

"There . . ."

A faint green luminescence shone down one side of a
low pillar, far off, where distance made the pillars small as a finger at arm’s
length. Again the sound hissed, growing from inaudibility to a harsh breath of
pain. It sawed the warm air. Her chest tightened, attempting to match that
arhythmic breathing. The White Crow frowned, mouth open.

Candia grunted as if he had been punched. "Theo."

The White Crow looked to Heurodis. The old woman
shook her head, moving forward to take the blond man’s elbow. His face held some
abstract expression of pain and memory that defied analysis. The White Crow
began to walk, hearing their slow footsteps behind her.

Pillars shifted, perspective moving them in her
peripheral vision. Dry warm air rasped in her lungs. Deliberately barefoot, she
walked lightly on the balls of her feet, letting the sensations of the
flagstones guide her.

Between pillars, away in the milky light, she
glimpsed a far wall. She walked faster.

"Master-Captain!"

The hissed whisper broke her concentration. She
gestured shortly with her blood-wet left hand, ignoring Heurodis. More shifted
in the light than perspective could account for. Small hairs hackled down the
back of her neck. She slid from one squat round pillar to the concealment of the
next.

Greenness drifted into the granular milky light,
coiling as if it were steam or smoke and not luminescence: a light the color of
sun through a canopy of new leaves. It touched the skin of her arms,
goose-pimpling them with cool. A stink of old blood caught in her throat.

"Stay back." The White Crow touched one bloody
finger to her backpack, stepping across the flagstoned space towards a door that
opened into a tiny stone cell. She looked inside.

Candia, behind her, whispered: "
Theo
. . ."

Shock hit: her sweaty skin going cold between her
shoulder-blades and down her arms. The White Crow bent forward and retched. One
hand to the door-frame, the other leaning for support on her rapier, eyes blind
with the tears of nausea, she vomited up the bile of a day’s fasting.

"Oh shit . . . Don’t come in. Somebody keep watch
outside."

She spat, wiped her nose with the heel of her hand,
took in a breath, and stepped into the white stone cell. Its low step caught her
foot. She stumbled, staring ahead.

Stark against her sight, an iron spike curved up
out of the masonry wall. Blood and pale fluids had dried in streaks below it.
The White Crow stared at the head of a man impaled on the iron spike. Undecayed,
spots of blood still dripped from the neck-stump to the stained floor. White
hair flowed down to where, red-dappled, it stuck to drying knots of vertebrae,
slashed cords and tendons.

Only the head: the cell held no truncated body.

Dappled light shifted, green and gold. For a second
the White Crow sensed the rush of branches, birds, steps through leaf-mold. A
shriek of ripped wood echoed, the light shifting. She knelt, staring levelly at
the creased labile face.

At his open conscious eyes.

Heurodis’s sharp indrawn breath sounded above her
head. The fair-haired man fell to his knees beside her. One dirty hand reached
out as if he would touch the severed head. The White Crow caught his wrist.

"No, messire, I’m sorry. Not with the power here."

Tears brimmed over the lower lids of Candia’s eyes.
Absently moving his knife, he picked with the tip of it under one thumbnail.
Green light gleamed from the blade. "My lord Bishop . . . Theo, tell me how.
I’ll do it."

The White Crow got to her feet, eyes never leaving
the severed head. Heurodis whispered, "Take more than a knife, girl, when it’s a
god keeping that thing alive," and the White Crow nodded, and risked a glance
over her shoulder.

"Rot it! I thought as much."

Outside the cell, the pillars of the crypt had
vanished. The cell now opened onto a gallery, forty feet above the floor of a
high-vaulted chamber large as the nave of a cathedral, white and gold stone
gleaming in sourceless brilliance. The White Crow touched a knee briefly to the
floor, kneeling to look up and out past the low arch of the cell’s doorway.